by Patrick Appel
The results of a recent YouGov survey:
Drum breaks down the numbers by age:
[T]he most popular choice of nearly every age group is a decade of their youth. millennials like the ’90s, when they were growing up. My generation likes the ’80s, when we were just out of college. Only the thirtysomethings seem not to care, showing no particular preference for any decade between the ’50s and ’90s.
But it’s the nostalgia of seniors for the ’50s that intrigues me the most. I’d love to see a demographic breakdown of that. I assume that nonwhites aren’t pining away for that era, which means that white seniors must really be in love with it to produce such a high overall number.
Millman compares Republicans and Democrats:
Republicans and Democrats largely agree about the decades before the 1980s. Democrats actually like the Republican-dominated 1920s better than Republicans do, and Republicans slightly prefer the Kennedy-Johnson ’60s over Democratic views of that decade, but from the 1900s through the 1970s, memories move roughly in tandem. Then, in the 1980s, there’s a split, as Republicans prefer the ’80s somewhat over the ’70s, while Democrats feel the opposite. And then, with the ’90s, there’s a huge disparity, with Democrats preferring them slightly over the ’80s, and roughly in-line with the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, while Republicans loathe the ’90s only slightly less than they do the ’30s or the ’10s.
And, finally, Yglesias asks why the 1990s gets so little love.
The Dish 